NEW YORK — Alex Rodriguez makes more this year than his hometown Florida Marlins. Boosted by his new deal with the New York Yankees, A-Rod tops the major league baseball salary list at $28 million, according to a study of contract terms by The Associated Press. The 33 players on the Marlins’ opening-day roster and disabled list total $21.8 million.
Now the baseball season is underway, life seems just a little bit better, doesn’t it? Even though Minneapolis got 8” of snow on Opening Day, is there a more reliable indication that Spring is upon us than baseball games counting? OK, so my Minnesota Twins aren’t going to go 162-0 this year. This early in the season, though, everyone thinks their their teams are World Series caliber…unless you’re a Florida Marlins fan. In that case, if you’re thinking World Series, you might want to have your medication adjusted.
As much as I love the game, nothing says that something is horribly wrong than this sad reality: Alex Rodriguez makes more THAN THE ENTIRE FLORIDA MARLINS ROSTER. Yes, Rodriguez earns more than 33 players. If I need to spell out what’s wrong with that…well, you should probably go back to working crossword puzzles. If Satan Commissioner Bud Selig would only remove his anterior from his posterior, he might be able to recognize that this sort of monstrous competitive imbalance is doing nothing to help the game’s cause. Why should fans in Miami pay major league prices to watch what amounts to a AAA ballclub. When I was in Miami a couple years ago, I went to a Marlins game at Whoever-Happens-To-Be-The-Sponsor-Of-The-Moment Stadium. In a football stadium that seats probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000 were perhaps 2,000 bored, distracted souls…and this was the season after the Marlins had won a World Series title.
Yes, baseball is still a beautiful thing. It’s just too bad that the Lords of Baseball can’t be bothered to recognize what they’re doing to the national pastime. When one player makes more than one team’s entire 33-player roster, competitive balance has become a myth- and it puts the lie to the belief that strike Bud Selig is earning his $15 million annual salary.
